System and method for application license management in virtual environments

Abstract

A system and method for managing licensing of virtual environment applications. A licensing module of a first installed virtual environment application detects installation of affiliated applications and gives them a group licensing key for passing it to the licensing server. The licensing server derives licensing parameters of the affiliated applications from the group key and gives the licenses to the affiliated applications, in case of successful validation. The licensing system provides protection from un-authorized copying of the applications. If an affiliated virtual environment application is copied (or moved) to another hardware node without its virtual environment, the licensing server will not give the license activation key to this virtual environment application.

Description

CROSS-REFERENCE TO RELATED APPLICATIONS[0001]This application is a divisional of U.S. patent application Ser. No. 13 / 705,221, filed on Dec. 5, 2012, which is incorporated herein by reference.BACKGROUND OF THE INVENTION[0002]1. Field of the Invention[0003]This invention relates to a method and system for application license identification and management in virtual environments, and more particularly to identification of licenses of affiliated applications.[0004]2. Description of the Related Art[0005]Virtualization in computer systems presents some challenges with regard to licensing of the applications running within virtual environments, such as containers. Each container can have its own container license key and several container applications each having their own license keys. Managing all these licenses can present some problems.[0006]Conventional licensing schemes for proprietary applications are simple—one license is given to one copy of the application. Typically, the license...

AI Technical Summary

Benefits of technology

[0014]According to one exemplary embodiment, the licensing system provides protection from un-authorized copying of the applications. For example, if a second (affiliated) container application is copied (or moved) to another hardware node without its container, after a first monthly license check, the licensing server will not give the license activation key to this container application. The licensing server knows that the container ID of this container application has to be affiliated with a group key of the first container application.

Problems solved by technology

Virtualization in computer systems presents some challenges with regard to licensing of the applications running within virtual environments, such as containers.

Managing all these licenses can present some problems.

Conventional licensing schemes are not flexible and can be inconvenient for the hosting providers, where application installations are implemented dynamically (on-the-fly) using different scenarios.

If the described licensing scheme were to be implemented using “one application—one license” principle, the license validation would have become a very large complex task in cases when a host server has thousands of hosting clients, each having tens of licensed applications installed in their virtual environments.

If the described licensing scheme were to be implemented using “an application package—one license” principle, it would have been impossible to provide flexible distribution of applications on the clients considering different configurations of the applications required for the different clients.

However, the Master License system does not work well with the virtual environments.

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